We’ll show you how you can use OneNote for project management, either by yourself or with your team, and we’ll demonstrate basic and advanced OneNote features along the way.

1. Use Notebooks, Sections, and Pages

With OneNote, you can create as many notebooks as you want. Within each notebook, you can keep multiple sections (tabs listed on top). And within each section, you can create sub-pages (listed on the right-hand side). This structure is ideal for collecting and organizing information.

Let’s say one of your projects is to organize an event and you need to find a venue, a caterer, and a band. Each of these are deliverables — i.e. sections.

When you do your research for each of these items, you can store your results on a page of the respective section. Other pages under the same section may be dedicated to lists of your next steps, contact information, booking details etc.

When you’re working in a team, you can share notebooks and let the whole team contribute. Staying with the event example from above, several members of your team could help research the venue, caterer, and band, while others might use the finalized information to get in touch with the potential candidates to request quotes, discuss the details, and make bookings.

When you create a new notebook, OneNote will ask you whether you want to invite people.

To share an existing notebook, go to File > Share. Here you can Share with People individually or Get a Sharing Link, either for viewing or editing the notebook, which you can send to your team.

3. Organize Data in Lists & Tables

Everything is easier to digest when it’s presented in a structured way. You can use lists to collect ideas or outline project goals. Tables can help you keep track of stakeholders, resources, or schedules.

Insert a Table

To create a table, go to Insert > Table and select the size. You can add additional rows and columns later: right-click the table and go to Table > Insert… Here you will find more table formatting features, such as sorting, shading, or hiding borders.

Create Lists

OneNote supports three types of lists: bulleted, numbered, and checklists. The specific formatting of bullets and numbers can be customized. Checklists can be combined with bulleted or numbered lists.

To create a list, type out some items, and highlight them. The floating formatting menu should show up. If not right-click the list, then select Bullets, Numbering, or Tag as To Do (aka checklist).

As Ryan’s article shows, OneNote offers seamless integration with Microsoft Outlook. For example, you can create “to-do” items from meeting minutes in OneNote. Linking OneNote to Outlook enables you to organize all these daily to-do items in one place.

Tasks can be collected in Outlook from all project pages in your OneNote notebooks. When you complete a task in Outlook, the corresponding task is marked as completed in the respective OneNote page.

4. Track Emails & Share Information

Email is an effective communication tool for projects, but it’s a poor way to keep track of important information or files. Moreover, not everyone needs to be CCed while a conversation leading up to a decision is taking place. How then do you keep everyone informed?

To share information, you can use Outlook’s Send to OneNote Ribbon button or you can manually drag emails into a shared notebook. This way anyone can catch up on the conversation or find details when needed.

In addition to Outlook emails you can share content from other sources. To customize how OneNote handles incoming content, go to File > Options > Send to OneNote. You can choose custom settings for Outlook Items, Web content, Print to OneNote, and screen clippings. The default setting is Always ask where to send.

5. Set Up a Team Wiki

Whether you want to keep track of team contacts, record your lessons learned across multiple projects, or offer an outline of specific processes, OneNote works incredibly well as a shared and collaboratively edited wiki. One feature you’ll need to make this work, is linking to notebooks, sections, pages, and paragraphs.

Right-click on a notebook, section, page, or area on a page and select Copy Link to… Now paste the link anywhere in your notebook. Alternatively, you can highlight and right-click an item, select Link…, choose the notebook, section, or page you would like to link to, and click OK to add it.

A quick way to link to a page is to type [[name of page]]. If the page doesn’t exist, it will be created instantly.

6. Make Meetings More Productive

It’s impossible to work with a team and not have meetings. To get the best out of your meetings, prepare an agenda and take meeting minutes. This will help you make best use of the meeting time and keep track of everything that was said and decided.

The benefits of keeping meeting notes in OneNote are manifold:

You can import meeting details from Outlook via Home > Meeting Details.

7. Use Project Templates

For iterative projects with recurring processes, it can be a huge help to have tried and trusted templates to work from. When you make things like checklists or work schedules available as a template, your team will save time. It’s less likely that an item will be missed, and consistency across your team will increase.

OneNote comes with a selection of preset templates, including several different ones for meeting notes.

Find them under Insert > Page Templates… > Business. Whenever you’re planning a meeting, use one of those templates to create the agenda and base your meeting notes on it.

To create a custom template, prepare your preferred layout in OneNote, then go to Insert > Page Templates… and click Save current page as a template at the very bottom.

OneNote will ask you to add a template name and if desired, you can set it as default template for new pages in the current section.

Next time you need your template, fetch it from the list under Insert > Page Templates… > My Templates.

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Elaine

June 1, 2017 at 1:25 pm

I love OneNote! I have notebooks for travel, hobbies (gardening, photography, knitting, etc.), recipes, quotes and remodeling projects. I scan receipts and put them in a notebook also. I hate keeping all those miscellaneous pieces of paper of things I want to save like copies of warranties or a program from a special ceremony or play I have attended - I just scan and save in OneNote then I can throw away the hard copy.

very interesting, thank you very much for this article. It makes me want to try out OneNote. :-)

However, there is one important aspect missing: can I keep all information locally on my computer or on a server in my own network?
If I want to share information or sync information with other devices, is it automatically saved on any cloud storage from Microsoft or others?

Especially if used for business projects, this is IMHO a very important question.

If you're a Windows users, you can store a local copy and use OneNote without a Microsoft account. Mac users can not store a local copy I think. If you log in with your Microsoft account, a copy will (by default) automatically be stored on OneDrive and synced in regular intervals. You can turn syncing off under File > Options > Save & Backup.

I use one note for my modified project management or tasks tool. I have static pages titled inbox, short term and long term. The inbox is set up last of the three and all of my emails that I send to OneNote from Outlook go to that section and add a new page at the bottom of the page list and under the inbox page I have built. Then as I sort through the tasks I sent through the day I can slide them to short term or long term sections manually. Or to other tabs as necessary. I share my notebook with my coworker and it allows me to keep organized with who is doing what. Love one note for these things.

Tina has been writing about consumer technology for over a decade. She holds a Doctorate in Natural Sciences, a Diplom from Germany, and an MSc from Sweden. Her analytical background has helped her excel as a technology journalist at MakeUseOf, where she's heading the Windows and Productivity sections.